Copy, steal, any mind game is fair game. A Vorthos deck revolving around Oko's ability to make illusions, shapeshift other beings and control others.
Oko, Thief of Crowns
is a complex to build around. He is very flexible, has a powerful +1 ability that affect either us or our opponent, but his ult is a simple switcheroo. You'll find modular creature are very popular with him as they keep the +1/+1 counters, thus making him a powerful enhancer. However, this is not the direction we will take. He will take a control role with us. The signature spell follows in the same vein, half control, half building up whatever it is we are doing.
Polymorphist's Jest
allows to temporarily make a creature small enough to steal it with Oko's Ult. It also serves as protection against an attack or to mess an opponent when other players are attacking each other.
The whole deck is tricky. Removal will be in the form of stealing. There are no boardwipe to keep our options as large as possible. Our game plan is to get value from whatever our opponents are doing. Though we do run a few good creatures so we can copy ourself when our opponents don't offer us a great variety. On the plus side, having Oko on the battlefield isn't instrumental to the deck. We don't have to force a game plan and rush.
We run a fair amount of green mana sources because our ramp is mostly green. For cards like Spiral Growth and
Coiling Oracle
we want exactly 1 forest and one island on turn 2. So we need to have almost parity despite only using about a third green spells. A lot of our ramp double as blockers to protect Oko, some will want his +1 for enhance effectiveness in that regard.
On the beater category, they are here because we cannot know for sure there will be somethign on our opponent's board. So worst case scenario we have a few excelent creatures to smash them with that double as copy target.
There are some cool stuff to do with
Mimic Vat
beside stealing an opponent's creature and beating them with it. We can save one of our clone in the Vat, and whenever we need a blocker, we get a copy of the creature we want to block, often killing it in the process. We can also safegard an
Eternal Witness
and abuse some recursion.
We also have two excellent synergies with Oko. First, with
Perplexing Chimera
, we can just turn it into a commong 3/3 whenever we want to disable the chaos it is causing. Then we have
Willbreaker
that allows us to steal anything we used Oko's +1 on. This way, our opponents don't even get the 3/3 when we disable their best permanent.
Some interactions to know about when piloting the deck:
- When copying a creature under a transmutation spells like
Lignify
, the copy has the original values and abilities, it is not a treefolk or a frog without abilities. Beside budget restriction, it's a reason why not run
Song of the Dryads
or
Imprisoned in the Moon
.
- The above also applies to a creature transformed by Oko's +1.(I asked a judge on reddit)
- Once a creature has been copied, the copy doesn't care what happens to the original.
- A copying a copy makes the copied creature. You don't get a 0/0 when copying
Clone
.
- You can exchange control of enchantment like
Lignify
without detaching them from the creature they enchant. Thus,
Daring Thief
can help you get some sweet enchantments without any drawbacks. It also work with
Pithing Needle
or similar artifacts. Basically anything that sets a target when it is cast or ETB is "fair" trade.
PS: I haven't put a
Biovisionary
in the deck simply because I think it is too slow a wincon for a non combo deck.
